Business Owner Planning

Succession & Exit Planning

There will come a day when you will leave your business. Cora Capital Advisors works with you to develop a sound plan that will ensure your business passes successfully to its next owner.

Cora Capital’s financial professionals can work with you to clarify your goals, build your succession plan, manage your risk and adjust your plan, as needed.

Some strategies for business succession can take years to fund and implement, making it vital to begin planning now. As with all financial planning, the sooner you start thinking about how you want to transition your business, the sooner we can help you put in place the plan that will help get you there.

Executive Compensation Planning

As the owner of a closely held business, you may already offer a qualified retirement plan such as a SEP, Simple or 401k. While these plans offer significant tax advantages and meaningful benefits, rules governing contribution limits, minimum distributions, early withdrawals and minimum vesting amounts may not provide you and your key top-level executives with the support needed for securing a comfortable retirement.

Non-qualified benefits give you and your key employees additional ways to save for the future, through solutions such as:

1. A supplemental executive retirement plan, which allows you to promise to pay additional income to yourself or your key employees at a later date, which is usually retirement
2. An executive deferred compensation plan, which allows you or your key employees to forego receipt of a portion of current income until a later date, which is usually retirement
3. Bonus plans, which provide you or your key employees with additional income that can be used to purchase insurance, annuity or investment products

Cora Capital Advisors can help you tailor and implement executive compensation plans to give your business a competitive edge in recruiting and retaining top talent, while simultaneously meeting your business’s objectives.

Tax Planning

As a current or potential business owner, tax considerations are a necessary part of every decision that you make. Most business owners do their best to comply with all the rules and regulations applicable to their business, however, with all of the overlapping laws from federal, state and local governments, it can be a dizzying and confusing prospect.

Not only do we help business owners to understand their obligations under the law, but we also bring our team and other professionals to help you be compliant in ways that are most beneficial to you.

You will make choices from the inception of the business and during ongoing operations that can result in significantly different tax obligations for you. While it is impossible to summarize every potential issue here, we will highlight several of the key issues that need to be considered.

Entity Formation

This is one of the most important decisions a business owner will make. While most businesses do not need a separate legal entity, depending on your business, it may make sense to establish one. This is not purely a tax question. There are legal liability issues that must be considered as well. We will work in concert with your attorney to craft the ideal solution for you. Whether you operate as a partnership, an LLC or a corporation, there are pros and cons that must be carefully evaluated.

Owner Income Planning

For most small businesses, maximizing the after-tax income of the owner or owners is a priority. This often involves decisions as to how the owners will be compensated. Will they be paid on payroll or simply be taking draws from the profits of the business? This decision may impact the taxes assessed on the business itself and the owners as individuals.

Retirement Plans and Employee Benefits

All businesses are only as good as their people. To attract and retain top talent, it is essential in today’s competitive market to offer certain benefits. One main benefit many people expect is often a tax-advantaged retirement plan such as a 401(k) or SIMPLE IRA. In many cases, these plans can be structured such that the tax savings to the owner may cover the cost of operating the plan and even providing a much appreciated matching contribution for employees. For newer businesses, we can help with structuring a basic plan that gives you room to grow. For more mature and profitable businesses, we can help you in designing a plan that not only benefits employees, but also offers the owners the opportunity to save large amounts of money for their own retirement at a significant current tax savings.

With the recent changes to the health insurance landscape in this country due to healthcare reform legislation, there are many new rules that impact employers. Depending on the size of your company, you may be mandated to provide some level of affordable coverage for employees. This is an area that is still not fully understood by most people and requires professional guidance to understand your obligations and make appropriate choices. Working with our employee benefits division, Cora Capital Assurance, we will assist you in navigating this potential minefield of regulations.

Liability Protection

Proper formation and operation of a separate legal entity can provide some personal liability protection for you. In addition, all businesses will want to have various insurance-based protections in place. You will need to consider business owner’s liability insurance, employment practices insurance, worker’s compensation, auto insurance and possibly others. Working with our property & casualty insurance partners, we will help you evaluate and select appropriate coverages for your business.

Conclusion

As you can see, starting and running a business is not a simple matter. At Cora, we understand that our business-owner clients take pride in operating companies that are the best at what they do. Our job is to let you concentrate on what you do best by guiding you through these decisions that will help make sure your business is an engine not only to do what it does, but also to power you to the success and freedom you seek in your own life.